Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Hank, I'm glad that we managed to destroy lots of explosives. By the way, what kind of explosives did we destroy and/or keep? Apparently the stuff we found, then abandoned, and then "lost" were especally toxic stuff.

• HOW MUCH BANG FOR THE BUCK? Most people have probably never heard of RDX, HMX, and PETN, the types of explosives that were looted from al Qaqaa. (Neither did I until I started researching this recently.) Depending on how you ask, these are either the most powerful or among the most powerful conventional explosives that exist. So how much boom do you get for 380 tons of the stuff? My friend and fellow blogger Phillip Carter, a former Army captain, e-mails with an attempt at a back-of-the-envelope calculation, using a "how many Oklahoma City bombings" metric. Here's the result:
  OK City = 5,000 pounds/2,300 kg of ammonium-nitrate and nitromethane.
  This mix has a TNT equivalent ranging from 3%-10%, i.e. the OK City bomb is the equivalent of 150 - 500 pounds of TNT.
  
  AQQ = 380 tons of RDX, HMX and PETN. RDX and PETN have a TNT equivalent value of 170%. Converted into TNT, the AQQ stockpile equals 646 tons or 1,292,000 pounds of explosives.
  
  Convert this back into my OK City metric, and this means that the lost material at AQQ equals betwen 2,584 - 8613 OK City-size bombs. That's one hell of a lot of material to be on the street -- enough to fuel a car-bomb and IED-based insurgency for years, if not decades.
  
  Chilling thought. Even if the order of magnitude is off by, say, two decimal places.

So you agree that SH had WMDs then.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
So you agree that SH had WMDs then.

Nice try (slave tried this one earlier saying that they should have been destroyed by the IAEA), but they are considered "dual use" explosives.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Hank, I'm glad that we managed to destroy lots of explosives. By the way, what kind of explosives did we destroy and/or keep? Apparently the stuff we found, then abandoned, and then "lost" were especally toxic stuff.

• HOW MUCH BANG FOR THE BUCK? Most people have probably never heard of RDX, HMX, and PETN, the types of explosives that were looted from al Qaqaa. (Neither did I until I started researching this recently.) Depending on how you ask, these are either the most powerful or among the most powerful conventional explosives that exist. So how much boom do you get for 380 tons of the stuff? My friend and fellow blogger Phillip Carter, a former Army captain, e-mails with an attempt at a back-of-the-envelope calculation, using a "how many Oklahoma City bombings" metric. Here's the result:
  OK City = 5,000 pounds/2,300 kg of ammonium-nitrate and nitromethane.
  This mix has a TNT equivalent ranging from 3%-10%, i.e. the OK City bomb is the equivalent of 150 - 500 pounds of TNT.
  
  AQQ = 380 tons of RDX, HMX and PETN. RDX and PETN have a TNT equivalent value of 170%. Converted into TNT, the AQQ stockpile equals 646 tons or 1,292,000 pounds of explosives.
  
  Convert this back into my OK City metric, and this means that the lost material at AQQ equals betwen 2,584 - 8613 OK City-size bombs. That's one hell of a lot of material to be on the street -- enough to fuel a car-bomb and IED-based insurgency for years, if not decades.
  
  Chilling thought. Even if the order of magnitude is off by, say, two decimal places.

TAPPED

Exactly, and it begs the question, how could the UN have left him with this? Dual use? that's a lot of oil pipeline projects. seems to me that you now have to agree it is a good thing we went in and starting destroying all this stuff, even if a few percentage points got stolen.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Exactly, and it begs the question, how could the UN have left him with this?

Seems to me that the UN was told to get the hell out of there by an invading force that claimed to be better at finding weapons.

Dual use? that's a lot of oil pipeline projects. seems to me that you now have to agree it is a good thing we went in and starting destroying all this stuff, even if a few percentage points got stolen.

And less than a percentage point of the planes that took off in 2001 crashed into buildings.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Nice try (slave tried this one earlier saying that they should have been destroyed by the IAEA), but they are considered "dual use" explosives.

Yes, they are weapons good for blowing up people AND buildings. Lots of them. Causing mass destruction.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Seems to me that the UN was told to get the hell out of there by an invading force that claimed to be better at finding weapons.

When you step up to get SS or Gattigap out of a no-win jam they're in it reminds me so much of the moviePumpkin.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Ty quotes from the Nelson Report:

Thanks for covering for me, babe.

[SlaveNoMore]

Not Me
So you agree that SH had WMDs then.

Oddly enough, and as I said earlier, contrary to the bogus NYT claims, this material was already "missing" when the boots arrived on the ground:

• Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News pretty much dismantled the New York Times attack on behalf of Kerry today.
  
  

  April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq.

  (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Ty how close are Illinois and NY?

About 800 miles, off the top of my head. If not for Indiana, you could get from one to the other without passing through a state that's going to go for Bush.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Oddly enough, and as I said earlier, contrary to the bogus NYT claims, this material was already "missing" when the boots arrived on the ground:

• Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News pretty much dismantled the New York Times attack on behalf of Kerry today.
  
  (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)

Condi says she only learned of it about a month ago. McClellan says the Pentagon only leaned of it 10 days ago. Pentagon spokesperson says the explosives were removed before our troops came around, which would mean the explosives would have been missing for quite a while. Sorry, but we get confused when you guys can't stay on message.

And speaking of message, why wasn't Rice, our National Fucking Security Advisor, aware of the disappearance of a very large amount of the very type of high explosives that AQ has attempted to use in this country previously? She's a fucking disgrace.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Oddly enough, and as I said earlier, contrary to the bogus NYT claims, this material was already "missing" when the boots arrived on the ground:

Either it was gone before the troops got there (likely moved to syria) or it was there hidden and the troops couldn't find it.

Speaking of another arm chair general who gets my blood boiling, anyone see Laurence O'Donnell say that he doesn't care if the troops are demoralized by Kerrey's negativity about what they are doing in Iraq? Nice. While they are fighting for our safety, this idiot says this. The left hates the military.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1236462/posts

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
She's a fucking disgrace.

If a Rep had said something like that about a black woman in the clinton administration, the Dems would be screaming racism.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
Either it was gone before the troops got there (likely moved to syria) or it was there hidden and the troops couldn't find it.

Speaking of another arm chair general who gets my blood boiling, anyone see Laurence O'Donnell say that he doesn't care if the troops are demoralized by Kerrey's negativity about what they are doing in Iraq? Nice. While they are fighting for our safety, this idiot says this. The left hates the military.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1236462/posts

The troops already know that the war was a mistake, silly. And the left doesn't hate the military enough to send them into a nation-building exercise with no well-defined goals or exit strategy. And it is well established that W cares more about his political career than the lives of the troops -- he threatened to veto money to fund the troops unless he got his tax cuts.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
If a Rep had said something like that about a black woman in the clinton administration, the Dems would be screaming racism.

So are you screaming racism, or just finding an opportune moment to offer an unrelated whine about Democrats?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
If a Rep had said something like that about a black woman in the clinton administration, the Dems would be screaming racism.

You guys got so mad about the Mary Cheney thing. Is it okay to say that Condi is black (and a lesbian)?